Legends of Andor 2 - Legend 10 - Hadria

[A board game session from The Legends of Andor]

After defeating the evil mermaid, the heroes DL the warrior, Mom the archer, and Rose the tracker finally reach the frozen lands of Hadria thanks the the sickly Merrik - whom they deposit with the sorcerers of the tower: a hospitable lot who provide some gear and more importantly also gate in Juris the wizard and Joe the guardian because for the first day the two of us are forced to sit out because... bad design?

Anyway, the sorcerers ask us to deliver a peace treaty to their rivals the sorcerers of fire in the capital city to the East, along with barrels of grain to keep the populace alive over the winter - which is mechanically annoying by placing snow tokens on almost every land spot at the end of each day. Of course a number of monsters also needs to be dealt with to keep our fame up (because no point in saving the day if no one remembers you), so while the others fight off some critters and then take a hard cold hit due to not being in town or in a boat during the evening (oops), Mom races over with the ship and delivers the message.

Their response to the peace treaty is to actively march against the tower sorcerers immediately, their main dispute being that the tower guys have magic weapons and don't want to share. And so, the heroes band together on the boat and race back to defend the tower mages by killing the people they just gave grain to. The tower sorcerers are thankful, and bestow a friend upon them: the sea giant Thanos who is limited to sea spaces but can really pack a punch.

They make the most of this added arsenal to crush all the enemies they can get to, while also picking up a band of allied (mino)Tauri and crates that have the three colored runes (better dice to roll) AND the long missing witches brew (doubles your attack roll). Just as well because the dark shadow of Qurun "aka the end of the world" then appears over the tower, intelligently just out of reach of Thanos and the boat ballista - but it is still no match for the heroes who handily defeat it.

If only he spent less power on his looks.

Upon his lengthy dying soliloquy, Qurun transforms to his true form of Varkur the dark mage and puppet master to almost everything that's happened thus far - including luring the heroes so far to the North to leave Andor defenseless! With a dying cackle he finally croaks.

And that's the end of Andor II. We'll need to get Andor III before we can continue the story. All in all still not as good as the original game and way too much setup.

Legends of Andor 2 - Legend 7 - Find the Cartographer

[A board game session from The Legends of Andor]

This huge expansion to the base game sees heroes DL the warrior, Mom the archer, Rose the tracker, and Joe the guardian meet new hero Juris the -fisherman- sea warden who happens to have a vessel they can use to begin their journey across a new ocean map! The sea warden's ability is that he is able to push the ship one tile for free. For those wondering "what happened to Legend 6? Was that the Star Shield?" the answer to that is no, Legend 6 is some downloadable adventure we didn't do (because really, just include it in the box next time?) that tells the story of why the dwarf hero is no longer around at this point. *shrugs* Who cares!? We're on a boat!

Alas, the "Journey to the North" (title on the box) is not complete without a cartographer so we must find one (because no one else knows how to steer North apparently). We arrive at the sea of four islands at around midday (because the game is scum and makes you lose half a day) and set out to visit each isle to find a suitable candidate and kill a trio of gors that show up to ruin our reputation. You heard that right! The narrator/time limit is not as bad on this board as it only moves for every two enemies slain now but a new "doom" track takes the form of "fame" tracked by a bard who sings about us. Fame takes a big hit per monster on land and should that fame ever reach zero we instantly lose... because ... we get sad and ... stuff? It's very stupid.

We quickly split up to discover the islands: "ship builder land" where we can upgrade the ship and sell logs, "the city of will" which boosts you to 14 will power if you end there and the third is home to sea shell purchasing dwarves and their traveling merchant Garz (and in another example of bad game design, of the four shell tokens one is valued ZERO. That's just a big middle finger from the designers I think). On the last island which is just a ruin, a ghostly specter points us to a nearby shipwreck where Joe finds a barely alive cartographer named Merrik! If we save him, we can guilt trip him into slavery! Huzzah! But wait - that's not the end of the mission. Looming nearby is a giant that looks a lot like Thanos, and for some reason we need to survive long enough until we can track him down? What!

Thanos on a boat!

With mermen, sea trolls, and giant fish horrors called arrogs all marching (swimming?) onto the islands we quickly gather up on the boat and kill all the weak ones as a team - taking their fame which then gets taken away by the bigger horrors making it onto land. Sounds a lot like GRINDING!? BECAUSE IT IS! STUPID DESIGN! Fighting from the boat is almost like everyone having a bow, and best of all it can move pretty fast depending on the wind. It can also screw you up as we found out when Juris positioned the ship nicely at the end of the day for a planned slaughter of fish dudes only for a storm to put us on the opposite end of the board. WTF.

Finally we kill/survive long enough for the giant to appear and, after ditching the comatose cartographer with the sea shell dwarves, we go to ask it some questions with our boat-bows and pointy arrows. It's very difficult to even land a hit on this guy, but when we finally do the mission ends as the giant simply smiles at us and dives beneath the waves.

Not a great start to this expansion. The hole filled story combined with bad mechanics that seem over tuned to the point of "if you do not kill all those gors in the round they appear, sorry you've lost the game" leaves us hoping the next few missions will be better.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Baron Zemo steals the show.

Another strong superhero show from Marvel, this one focusing on two of the now inactive Captain America's closest friends: Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Stan) who are both trying to get back to living post-Thanos.

I think Marvel is onto a winner making these short series. Helps avoid filler!

With a decent budget, great action scenes and most importantly excellent character development this six episode series is a must watch. Even if it's just for the scene stealing Baron Zemo (Daniel Bruhl). I like it better than Wandavision and give it four shields out of five.

Avengers: Endgame

There is only one way to win.

In this continuation of Avengers: Infinity War, the heroes band together once more to "avenge" what happened previously. It's safe to say you probably want to watch Infinity War first despite the decent Hawkeye opening that fills in what happened for new comers.

Like the previous movie, there are a lot of characters here and all but the main ones get very few lines or do one move then leave the scene especially at the end. I didn't mind it, and was quite entertained by the high budget "everything" that we've come to expect from the Avengers movies.

The gang's all here!

I did feel that there needed to be a higher body count though, especially on the good guys side. I guess everyone is wearing plot armor? Or perhaps they couldn't really dismember people (one exception that was sort of take backsies) viscerally on screen in a Disney backed film? Whatever the case, that weakened it a bit for me, and that bit where all/most of the female heroes manage to group up mid fight was literally bull-cheese. As if Captain Marvel needed back up anyway... lol!

All up I give this 4.5 power stones out of 5 and highly recommend to watch it (provided you've at least seen Infinity War). I'll definitely want to see it again. :)

Avengers: Infinity War

All hail Thanos!

Wow. This is a great film, packed with story and every actor brought their "A" game. As expected, the music, CGI and plot are all top notch too - it had to be to get all the heroes together, and while you don't get too much of anyone everyone does get their chance to shine.

I'm the glue that holds it all together.

There are action pieces a plenty mixed with strong story moments and Thanos himself (the villain) is surprisingly charismatic, which is great as the movie is basically about him. As far as I'm concerned, it was a perfect 5 infinity stones out of 5. I do suggest that you watch a few of the lead up movies though (at least anything with the word Avenger in it, as well as Captain America: Civil War and Thor: Ragnarok) or you will be very lost.